Conductor brings harmony to Arabs;Daniel Barenboim

Luke Harding in Berlin
Tuesday November 30, 2004
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1362610,00.html

Daniel Barenboim, the acclaimed Israeli conductor, yesterday unveiled his latest initiative to help the Middle East peace process - a music kindergarten for Palestinian refugee children.

The kindergarten in the Palestinian town of Ramallah opened three weeks ago and is working extremely well, Barenboim said. Seven Palestinian four- and five-year-olds are attending music classes, including piano and violin.

"An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get people interested in music. But an hour of violin lessons in Palestine is an hour away from violence and fundamentalism," Barenboim says in an interview in today's Guardian.

He said he hoped the charitable foundation he started with Edward Said, the late Palestinian intellectual, would soon open another music kindergarten in the Gaza Strip.

if his students will be forced to play their violins at the border checkpoints too?